Michele Gregory held her son Ny, both of whom graduated from Clara House but still come back to play and visit Thursday April 10, 2014 in San Francisco, Calif. Clara House, a residential program run by Compass Family Services, serves thirteen formerly homeless families at a facility near Market Street. Compass Family Services, the only full-service agency serving homeless people in San Francisco, Calif., is marking its 100th year of existence.

Under the watchful eye of Anndrea Ward children played in the courtyard of Clara House Thursday April 10, 2014 in San Francisco, Calif. Clara House, a residential program run by Compass Family Services, serves thirteen formerly homeless families at a facility near Market Street. Compass Family Services, the only full-service agency serving homeless people in San Francisco, Calif., is marking its 100th year of existence.

Jane Schisgal, director of Clara House, has been working with families for almost two decades in San Francisco, Calif. Clara House, a residential program run by Compass Family Services, serves thirteen formerly homeless families at a facility near Market Street. Compass Family Services, the only full-service agency serving homeless people in San Francisco, Calif., is marking its 100th year of existence.

In the early 20th century, the nation's social safety net was so paltry that 8-year-olds sweated in factories, and there was no such thing as Social Security or an unemployment check. If mom and dad found themselves on the street with kids and no cash, they either turned to a few religion-based charities or they starved.

Then came 1914, and the founding of the first nonprofit secular homeless-aid agency in San Francisco - an organization that today helps 3,500 people a year escape the ravages of indigence.

For decades, the agency was called Travelers Aid. Its original mission was mainly helping "she-tramps" - women who arrived without lasting support - when they came to see the Panama-Pacific International Exposition World's Fair in San Francisco.

In short order, however, the group was aiding whole families. Today, its mission is to help homeless children and parents, and the name has changed to Compass Family Services.

The world may be a much different place from a century ago, but the face of poverty looks remarkably the same.

Ticket for home

A lot of those in need long ago were merely confused travelers who couldn't locate friends or relatives, but many were homeless and needed temporary lodging provided by Travelers Aid through donations. The longer-term solution was generally to send people back to where they came from or connect them with relatives.

Typical cases outlined in Travelers Aid's annual report of 1918 sound like they could, with a slight twist, have been written today. An example: "Eva, a 20-year-old country girl, was seen looking about anxiously. The Aid learned that she expected to be met by her intended husband, but saw no one answering the description given in his letters."

Accounts from later years include the tales in 1931 of runaways "Johnny and Tony, aged 9 and 11," and of "Grandma M," 79, who wound up penniless on the streets after developing "a wholesome aversion to the modern ideas of her grandchildren."

They all ended up with tickets back home.

Unappealing options

Back in those days, before government rent subsidies and welfare checks, low-rent residential hotel rooms for working men and women went for 25 cents a night. Flophouses, which offered anything from mattresses in the hallway to tiny cubicles in warehouses, each topped with chicken wire, went for a nickel a night.

"If you were poor, you could probably get into a flophouse and out of the rain somehow," said UC Berkeley historical geography Professor Paul Groth. "But if you couldn't afford that, mostly you were just on the street."

In the last half of the 20th century, Travelers Aid's focus shifted toward families, and, in 1995, the outfit's name was changed to Compass Community Services. That became Compass Family Services in 2010.

Hayes Valley home

Today, Compass is the main nonprofit agency serving homeless families in San Francisco, overseeing an $8 million annual budget and seven programs including a family shelter, a rent-subsidy program and Clara House, a 35-resident center in Hayes Valley. The house offers homeless families a two-year stay while they get counseling, education and job training to be able to stand on their own again.

"Back in 1914, the people being helped by Travelers Aid - particularly women - were often running away from things," said Compass' executive director, Erica Kisch. "So there are some real parallels to today, because that is still often the case.

"Our job is about meeting basic needs, offering an extended support system, giving people the tools and resources so they can be self-sufficient."

Shrinking options

Those needs have become more acute over the past two decades, Kisch said, as soaring rents, growing income inequality and cuts in social services have made it harder for families on the economic edge to recover from crises. In 1994, the agency helped about 500 people a year, but in 2013, it was 3,500.

"In the mid-1990s, homeless families would get housed in a couple of weeks, and the Tenderloin was our last resort where you could always find something," Kisch said. "Not today. The waiting list now is six months or more, and now even the Tenderloin is tight for finding anything affordable."

Michelle Santillan, 32, said she would probably be on the street without her 18-month-old daughter, Ania, if not for Clara House. She fled a troubled relationship while she was pregnant, and, with nowhere to go, wound up in Compass' shelter for six months.

She's halfway through her two-year program at Clara House, getting counseling and taking food science classes at City College of San Francisco - which wouldn't be possible without the free day care Clara House offers on its brightly lit, homey first floor.

"Here, I have a second chance in my life," Santillan said. "I have food, a roof, I can plan. That's all I needed for my future. Without this place, I don't know where I'd be, but it would not be good."